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Context No. 682 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 1:40-54: in context

40Of the children of Asher, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war: 41those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Asher, were forty-one thousand five hundred. 42Of the children of Naphtali, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war: 43those who were counted of them, of the tribe of Naphtali, were fifty-three thousand four hundred. 44These are those who were counted, whom Moses and Aaron counted, and the twelve men who were princes of Israel, each one for his fathers’ house. 45So all those who were counted of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war in Israel— 46all those who were counted were six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty. 47But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not counted among them. 48For the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 49“Only the tribe of Levi you shall not count, neither shall you take a census of them among the children of Israel; 50but appoint the Levites over the Tabernacle of the Testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings; and they shall take care of it, and shall encamp around it. 51When the tabernacle is to move, the Levites shall take it down; and when the tabernacle is to be set up, the Levites shall set it up. The stranger who comes near shall be put to death. 52The children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard, according to their divisions. 53But the Levites shall encamp around the Tabernacle of the Testimony, that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the children of Israel. The Levites shall be responsible for the Tabernacle of the Testimony.” 54Thus the children of Israel did. According to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so they did.

Numbers takes its name from the two censuses that frame it, and this is the first, taken at Sinai before the march. It is a muster roll for war: every man twenty and older, tribe by tribe, who can bear arms. These verses finish the count with Asher and Naphtali and then give the sum, six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty fighting men. And then the list stops to name the one tribe left out of it.

The Levites are not counted among the soldiers, because they have been drafted for something else. They are set over the tabernacle, to carry it and tend it, to take it down when the camp moves and raise it when it stops, and to camp in a ring around it. The reason given is sharp on both sides. Anyone unauthorized who comes near the holy things is to die, and the Levites encamp around the tent so that no wrath falls on the rest of the people. Their exemption from the army is not a lighter load. It is a more dangerous one. The tribe not counted as fighters is the tribe that carries the most volatile thing in the camp and stands between it and everyone else.

The Levites were left out of the soldiers' count only to be handed the heaviest and most dangerous charge. Where have I mistaken being set apart from the common task for being let off, when it was really a harder assignment?

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